Challenges

Sourcing materials to build your vertical allotment can be a headache in urban places. Big garden centres are often expensive or packed with mass produced products shipped thousands of miles. Skips can offer good pickings in more affluent cities if you have time to search them – but can’t be relied on to produce the [...]

If you're looking to fill gaps or take advantage of higher sunny spaces in your growing space, hanging baskets can be a good solution. They can also look great. The big issue with hanging baskets is that they dry out quickly. This is a problem when growing vegetables - as most like plenty of water! [...]

What is municipal compost? How can you use it in your container growing? Is it safe? And is it the answer for the urban grower looking for a good quality, sustainable growing medium? This post will try to answer these questions. My next post will answer more of your questions about municipal compost, posted [...]

One of the challenges with container gardening is what you do with used compost. Replacing it every year seems expensive, labour intensive and not a good use of resources. The good news is that you can reuse it. To re-use it successfully, you need to replace the nutrients used by the previous crop. You can [...]

Just when I thought I'd got the knack of growing tomatoes from seed it all goes badly wrong: The main cause I've been advised by the experienced team up at Hawkwood (see Ru's excellent blog) is lack of nitrogen. As I planted them in fresh, commercially made, organic, peat free compost, I can only guess [...]

Cold North-easterly winds have been a big problem over the last month, slowing growth and reducing yields. Wind is a common enemy of the vertical gardener, growing on exposed balconies and roof terraces. It dries out leaves, batters and tears them, and makes the plant struggle to survive, let alone grow. Even light winds can [...]

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